Chapter Three
FBI Academy, Quantico, VA
Monday 18th October
12.36pm
As the agent at the desk had said, the body bag containing Tom Dexter had been laid out in the autopsy suite. Scully put on her medical overalls, surgical mask, glasses and gloves. All Mulder had done was to take off his jacket and roll up his sleeves. Scully threw him a pair of latex gloves and he put them on reluctantly.
"I don't really want to get all yucky." Mulder said, his nose wrinkled as Scully began to unwrap the corpse.
As the bag was unzipped the smell of blood and butchery wafted into the room. It mingled with the already pungent smell of disinfectant to create an offensive smell, but one that Mulder and Scully were well used to. When the body was fully removed from its wrapping, what lay on the autopsy table was a man whose body looked almost untouched by death, however above the shoulders, in the place where the head should be, was nothing but a mass of bloody tissue. The self-inflicted shot, which had torn through his chin, soft pallet and cranium, had also ripped his skull from the top of his spinal column. Scully gasped as she peered at the foul mess which was Tom Dexter's head. "You ever seen one this violent?" Mulder asked bending for a closer look at the corpse.
"Never." Scully answered breathless. "Did they retrieve the bullet and weapon?"
Mulder looked through a tray on a table behind him. "Yeah. Here's the gun. New FBI issue. Glock semi-automatic. Hell of a kick to the shot." Scully looked up at him.
"I can see that by the damage it's done. What about the bullet?" She picked up a scalpel and tweezers and began to pluck at some of the flesh.
"It says here, in the preliminary report, that the bullet is presumed to still be inside the victim."
Scully scoffed. "That's impossible! It has torn this man's head apart and turned the tissue into an unrecognisable mass. It must have emerged from the top or back of the skull to do this amount of damage. You just told me how powerful that weapon is!" Mulder stared at her and said crossly
"Hey, don't shoot the messenger! No pun intended!"
Scully sighed and said, "First things first. We need to record and weigh all the organs to check their health. Then we need to find that bullet, whether its in here somewhere or still out on the firing range. I can't believe the negligence…Who carried out the preliminary?"
Mulder looked back at the report, "Dr David Carlton."
"Carlton?" Scully thought. "I know him, Mulder. He's an oncologist at Holy Cross. He went through my x-rays! Why did they call him?"
"I'll find out." Mulder said and pulled off his rubber gloves with a snap. "You can manage on your own, right?"
Scully nodded. "I'll be back soon, Scully." He grabbed his jacket and cell phone and left the room.
When Mulder returned, Scully had weighed and catalogued all the organs possible except the brain and liver, and was speaking into a small black Dictaphone.
"Not a large enough volume of the brain left intact to record. Bullet is not present in cranial mass." She clicked the stop button on the machine as Mulder took off his jacket once more, and asked him, "What did you find out?"
"I spoke to Special Agent Stephanie Drage. She was the first qualified agent on the scene, except for Ed Peterson, and she said the reason that Dr Carlton was called is because he was the nearest. Apparently they called the hospital, who said that Carlton was visiting a cancer patient nearby and could get here fastest and carry out the preliminary. The patient lives in Triangle, so he was here in minutes."
Scully was satisfied with the explanation, but couldn't believe the experienced physician could presume the bullet had remained in the body.
"We'll need to speak to Carlton," Scully said. "And to his patient, and to Dexter's mother and sister, of course. But first we need to finish up here."
"What have you got left to do?" Mulder asked putting on another pair of latex gloves.
"I've still got to remove the liver. We need to do a tox-screen, but only for abnormal toxins." Scully flicked the scalpel inside the torso a few times and soon the liver was ready to be lifted out.
"Hand me that dish, Mulder."
She gestured to a large silver organ basin on the table behind Mulder. He held it out to her.
"Would you like fava beans with that? Or how about a nice Chianti?" He grinned.
Scully took the bowl from him. "That's a really tasteless joke for this moment in time, Mulder."
"Sorry." He mumbled looking at his shoes.
While waiting for the tox-screen to come back, the agents cleared up the autopsy suite.
"Boy am I glad I don't do this all the time." Mulder said wiping his brow with his forearm as he helped Scully to clear up. "How long did they say the tox-screen will be?"
"They're gonna call any minute now." Scully glanced at the clock on the wall. "Fill this out." She handed him a folder and Mulder sighed. He signed his name in the supervisory box of the form and wrote the date. Just then Scully's cell phone rang. It was the results.
"Well, the report shows no abnormal toxins. Just the normal trace levels of bile and lipases." She said as she replaced the phone into her pocket.
The agents left the autopsy suite and entered the locker room. Scully began removing her scrubs and white coat, and Mulder pulled out his own cell phone.
"It's SA Fox Mulder. I need the address of a Mrs Joanne Ford. Yeah, uh, somewhere in Triangle, Virginia. Now, please. Thanks, call me back." He turned to Scully who was just sorting out her hair. "Let's get up to the firing range and see if we can find something. We'll have Joanne Ford's address soon."